Lavender
by ivyfedora
Summary: While folding bed sheets with her mother, Jane reminisces on the overbearing scent of roses, and the not-so-bad smell of lavender.


**Disclaimer: Jane and the Dragon isn't the rightful property of me, it belongs to the producers and writers. **

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"Mother!" Jane protested, helplessly watching the lady who was her mother march into her tower room. Not even Dragon entered unaccounced; he usually gave a few precursory "moos," before poking his gigantic, green scaly head in.

"I had to fold the castle linens," Lady Adeline said in her usual crisp manner. Whoever the romantic fool her father had described in the days of their courtship, Jane had yet to meet her.

She looked around her daughter's bedchamber approvingly. Thank goodness jane had the foresight to clean her room properly. "I am glad you saw fit to rid the castle of-" slight pause for effect,"your heaps of clutter!"

It had been a surprisingly easy task, as Dragon had offered to incinerate it all up with one fiery breath. The castle had smelled suspiciously of burnt parchment paper, but the occupants passed it off as they did all strange things, sourcing it from the Wizard Tower.

"I could have you moved to a bigger room," she offered, piling the linens on the bed. Jane stiffened at this attempt to rob her of the one thing that had stayed constant in her ever-changing life.

"I am fine with my current quarters," she said stiffly, snatching up a perfumed duvet. Inhaling Princess Lavinia's signature scent: lavender, her smile turned into a scowl when her nose detected a secondary, underlying scent: roses.

Since the young Majesty had turned of age, many earnest suitors had sent out little gifts and trinkets in the hopes of securing themselves a proper kingship. There were quite the number of beautiful silver-wrought hand mirrors, hair combs, jewelries and delicate glass bottles of perfume stored away in Lavinia's closet.

The barely fifteen-year-old Lavinia had delighted in running about the castle, showing anyone who would listen her jewelry. Of course, that was sped up by her telling everyone to, "Stop! Your princess commands you."

"Jane," she said nearly everyday, childish lisp gone. "Look at this butterfly!" Jane would curtsy, smiling. "My, your little Majesty," she said, pretending to be envious of her latest find. "That certainly is very pretty."

When her young friend deduced that not everyone received pretty, pretty parcels in the mail, she offered Jane anything in her collection, except of course, the two bunny dolls sent by Prince Aleksander of Luxenburg.

The smart kinds played on the more childish aspect of her, sending splendid toys and beribboned stone rabbits. The weevil-brain kind, as Gunther called them, when he found out what they did, sent frilled dresses that she would never fit, not in a million years.

Jane had refused politely, saying that that would be most improper. A part of her had yearned for the poems, and the love-trinkets, and the hair ribbons, but that part was firmly squelched beneath her lofty dreams of becoming a knight. Now, those dreams didn't seem so far off as they did two years ago.

The gilded roses would stay cold and stone forever, but fencing with Gunther was far more interesting, and she learned much more about the art of insults than she ever did fixing hair.

Gunther had been to many cities with his father and had probably seen useless trinkets, as Jane dubbed them, of far more extravagance than the ones that could be found in this kingdom. Secretly, she did listen during his arrogant speeches at dinner, about the "refined ladies with hair more towering than Jane's," and all the "mediocre buildings, you wouldn't like them."

Of course, having been to more cities than she had, he was bound to brag about it, and she was bound to knock him off his high perch. He'd learned many colorful words in French and Spanish, as well as expanded his Latin vocabulary, which he used to greet her. The hard thing was discerning the curse words from the real ones, as they all blended together into a mess of sound.

One day, she'd thanked him for calling her a biscuit-weevil, but in French.

Another, she'd slapped him, much to her chagrin when Sir Theodore translated for her, for calling her a beautiful rose. She'd ignored that particular translation when he'd asked her if she'd figured it out, because that just made things confusing: Gunther's specialty.

The rose scent had most likely come from a heart-shaped glass bottle sent from one of the northern kingdoms. Jane remembered that one, because the princess had taken delight in running around, soaking the whole castle in the bottle's contents.

The sickly sweet scent was fine, except one day when Jane fell asleep, underclothes soaked with the scent of roses from hugging the Princess. The next morning, she'd woken up, bed reeking of the scent.

Changing the sheets for such a silly thing was unpractical, so she'd walked unhappily around the castle grounds, smelling of roses. Gunther had been highly amused, calling her _mon jardin de roses. _Whatever it meant, she was sure there was some degree of hidden insult to it and told him to sod off.

Lavinia had overheard and decided Gunther probably wanted to match with Jane (hopefully, in a non-romantic way) and produced the matching bottle, which Jane had no idea about, and squirted Gunther in the face with lavender.

He stumbled back, tears streaming from his eyes and elbowed Jane in the stomach. She threw a punch at his stomach, which he caught deftly, even though he'd temporarily lost the use of his right eye. This prompted a small fistfight, where they both came out reeking of flowers and sporting nasty bruises.

The village girls called that move the Jane, giggling whenever she walked by, heads bowed in conversation. She'd been mortified, and hid in her room until Pepper informed her that it would all go away in a week; the gossipers just needed another focus of attention.

So Dragon helped by spreading a rumor that Gunther was engaged, to a older, lovely...boy. The girls had a ball with that, and Jane's earlier embarrassment was forgotten.

Of course, Gunther was dogged by girls for ah, three months, all asking if the rumors were really true. But really, it was well-deserved, since he was the biggest maggot she'd ever had the pleasure of meeting.

"Mother," Jane said, snapping back to the present. "Shall I carry these on down to the Majesty's rooms?"

Her mother departed quickly, leaving a hastily planted kiss on her daughter's forehead. Jane slowly descended the cold stone steps, determined not to drop anything.

She made it through the king's and queen's shared bedchamber, curtsying behind the mass of sheets. Princess Lavinia wasn't in, nor the prince, but she still made a show of knocking on their doors.

Jane was just about ready to have a joust with the castle dummy, when she realized she'd placed _two_ folded bed sheets on Cuthbert's bed.

She ran in, curtsying quickly and grabbed the extra. Jogging down the stairs, she groaned when she realized who these sheets belonged to.

They smelled just like lavender.

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**Fin.**


End file.
